Fangs of Fury
by King Ta'nichi
Summary: The Outsiders have become the most lethal pride in all of Africa. But before they can settle scores with the Pridelands, other, deadlier enemies await...
1. A Typical Morning

**Chapter One – A Typical Morning**

As always, the sun seemed vindictively early in its rising. Kovu struggled to his feet and plodded out of the den. His fur was matted, his mane was tangled, every muscle and bone in his body ached, and the inside of his mouth felt like he'd spent the night gorging himself on swam scum.

It was a typical morning in the Outlands.

He licked his chops a few times and started contemplating the day as best he could at this early hour. It was the hottest time of the year in an already fiendishly hot part of Africa, and it would be a long walk to find any water anywhere, but the way his mouth felt at the moment, it would probably be worth it. Finding any food was going to be an even more difficult prospect; one that would probably even edge any other considerations out of his mother's head.

He swung his head heavily around towards the Pridelands border. The rivers around there were the only place he could be even reasonably sure of finding any water, but it was a longish way. His aching frame notwithstanding, he soon fell into his usual casual plod.

Before he'd gone a dozen steps, however, Sankai leapt up alongside him and started licking his muzzle.

"Good morning," she chirped, sounding obscenely cheerful.

"Good morning," he replied said with a grim smirk. "What's got you in such a good mood at this hour?"

"You finally being up," she said huskily, licking him again.

Kovu sighed, gave a resigned smile, and licked her back. He and Sankai had vaguely been mates for almost the last year. They'd lost their virginity to each other in the frenzied celebration after a victory over an Outskirts pride, and he hadn't felt able to just cut her loose afterward. He really did like her, and she him, and so their relationship had hung in a limbo of friendly mating ever since.

"So does Zira have any plans for today?" asked Kovu as they started walking again.

"She says she wants Yané and Karanga to go into the Pridelands to find some food. The rest of us are on a northeast patrol," replied Sankai.

"Shit," said Kovu, the early morning having deprived of any further eloquence.

"I don't know what Yané and Karanga did, but I need to start doing it too," said Sankai with total sympathy.

"Well they'll get yelled at a lot less on that job, but they're more likely to have to fight someone," said Kovu.

"I'd rather fight Sopami's whole pack than have to walk through the blazing sun all day just so we can say we've seen the edge of the Za Kodan Empire, so our Queen of the Flaming Rhino Horns can shake her fist at it."

"And don't forget that Princess Poisoned-Mane will be there too."

"And that's easy for you to say, Vitani leaves you alone."

"That's because she knows it bugs me more to abuse you."

"You're sweet," said Sankai, licking him again.

Thus having fallen into their usual rapport, Kovu and Sankai continued on their way to the river, determined to enjoy the only time that was to be their own today.

In the meantime, back at the Outsiders' den, Vitani had no sooner woken up than she'd started sharpening her claws on the cave floor, horribly waking up everybody else. A variety of curses and growls filled the den.

Outside, however, there was no sympathy to be found. Zira stood facing the rising sun, her fierce stare totally unwavering and her face betraying limitless determination and ferocity. The rest of her pride ambled shabbily out of the cave. They were all tough, fierce, determined, and loyal to Zira, but Zira herself possessed a single-mindedness that went beyond what was needed of a leader. And at the moment, all her energy was focused on a single target.

It had been two years since Simba had exiled them from the Pridelands. Zira had led a coup to take back power in Scar's name, which she would wield until Kovu was old enough to succeed. Zira and her followers had taken Simba and his lionesses totally by surprise, and were on the verge of destroying them when the Pridelands Royal Guard, a cheetah corps which Simba had newly reformed after its five-year dissolution under Scar's reign, had appeared. Its leader Sopami, the ruler of all the cheetahs in the Pridelands, had led a reckless charge that had cost the Guard heavily, but had saved Simba. His mother Sarabi had been killed, however, and his mate Nala had received a bad bite to the groin which had left her unable to have any more cubs.

Enraged, Simba had exiled Zira and all her followers from the Pridelands forever. He had assumed that once relegated to the Outlands, they would drift away from the Pridelands attempting to support themselves from day to day, and nevermore threaten Simba's rule. He had woefully underestimated them. Instead, Zira had immediately rallied her new pride and attacked all the prides inhabiting the Outskirts regions just to the northeast of the Pridelands, and only nominally under Simba's control. The new Outsiders had easily defeated all their new neighbours, and gained the run of their much more habitable lands.

Zira had then been in a position to renew her aggression on Simba. The Outsiders were based in the arid Outlands regions to the immediate east of Pridelands, and were able to provision themselves from their new subjects. As their training and organization improved, they were able to freely violate Simba's exile decree, and infiltrate the Pridelands on an almost daily basis. Simba's days would seem to have been numbered, but world events had saved him at the last minute.

The Za Kodan Empire, a vast empire almost the same size as the Pridelands which lay to the east, across the Outlands, had invaded the jungles to the north inhabited by the leopards. The war had gone badly for them, however, and they had been pushed back. In an effort to turn the tide again, the Za Kodan armies had looked abroad to recruit fresh troops and procure fresh resources.

They were now coming towards the Outlands, and thus Zira's own conquests.

They had no idea who they were dealing with.


	2. The Pride Deploys

**Chapter Two – The Pride Deploys**

As always, Zira strode onward heedless of the path she chose. It didn't matter if it was a swamp or a river, or a vast field of sharp, jagged rocks. She marched right through it or across it just the same. By now she had drilled the bulk of her pride well enough to follow her, but Vitani continued to try to temper Zira's zeal for directness when it became too dangerous or impractical.

Today, however, was not one of these days. Vitani, like the rest of the Outsiders, was heading straight for the Za Kodan Empire, no matter what stood in her way. Their goal there was simple: to find and kill anyone it might inconvenience Emperor Koba to lose, and then retreat back into the Outlands, where they could hide and vanish so effectively that no one alive could hope to find them. It was an admirably direct mission, and the mood of the pride on the move was as good as it ever was.

Kovu hung back at the rear of the group, with Sankai at his side.

"So you still don't like to actually preen yourself?" Kovu asked incredulously.

"I just don't see the need," replied Sankai. "I mean the whole point of the exercise is to remove foreign bodies from your coat isn't it? Do you really want to have them in your mouth, where they can do some real damage?"

"Yeah, but any other way, there's no way you can be sure you've gotten everything out."

"If you're that impatient about it. We live in an endless expanse of sharp, coarse, rocks. If you can't find one that makes a decent comb then I think you're just eager to savour whatever filth your fur's picked up."

"Yeah, but the reason you use your mouth and tongue in the first place is that they're so sensitive. You can tell how complete your job is. Any other way – you're just guessing, and you've probably missed stuff."

Sankai scowled at Kovu, daring him to carry his thought to conclusion. Kovu smirkingly obliged.

"And the way you'd smell after a year of that isn't worth thinking about," he smarmed at her.

Sankai briskly trotted a pace ahead of Kovu, then turned around and lunged at him, knocking him to the ground and pinning him.

"You're right it's not worth thinking about," she coolly said to him. She leaned in closer to him, bringing her mouth alongside his ear and continued, "Because everybody knows that for the last year I've always seemed to smell of you."

Kovu nuzzled her softly for that and pulled himself up. They held gentle eye contact for a second, but the moment was broken as a hard-bitten old lioness named Zataki sharply informed them that they were falling behind.

Kovu and Sankai both glared towards the front of the group. Zira and Vitani had just gained the top of a tall rock and for a moment stood silhouetted imposingly in the morning sun. Even from a distance, Kovu could tell Vitani was glaring contemptuously at him. He and Sankai grudgingly snarled and continued on.

Further up ahead, Vitani turned and continued onward. She hated having to incur her brother's dislike, but if she hadn't sent Zataki back to remind them, Zira would have gone back herself and harshly scolded them. And the last thing the pride needed this early on in a patrol was the bad blood that would create.

Vitani let go a small sigh. Kovu was by no means a joyful lion, but her brother had always been the more playful and rambunctious of them. They were twins. Vitani was only a few minutes older, but her dedication to their mother's cause was so much more humourless and ferocious as to make her seem years older and more hardened. Kovu, in spite of the rigorous and demanding training Zira had put them both through, had maintained a charm and slyness that Vitani had either lost or never possessed at all.

When they had physically matured, Kovu had wasted no time in discovering the joys of the lioness body. Vitani, however, had remained distant from the males she met, and became shy and reclusive. It was a few months later that she had opened up again and regained her authoritative edge, having finally found what she had been missing.

As Zataki returned to her side, Vitani let her tail brush hers for a few seconds, and purred almost imperceptibly.

As the pride reached the top of a ridge, a further barren, rocky landscape lay before them. In the distance, however, the fields began to grow greener as pockets of marshland dotted the plains. Beyond that, high cliffs loomed – the walls of the Za Kodan Empire elevating the outer rim of its territory above its surroundings. Zira paused long enough to snarl, then doggedly continued on.


	3. First Blood

**Chapter Three – First Blood**

Yane gave an involuntary growl as Karanga pushed aside the last few blades of grass and revealed the clearing in front of them. And yet again, it was devoid of anything living and edible. With a grunt, Karanga rose up and plodded heavily into the clearing. Yane followed, not rising out of her crouching position, her fangs still bared.

"And the Pridelanders claim they live in a kingdom of plenty," deadpanned Karanga.

"We could probably have found something by now if you didn't keep advertising our presence to everything within a kilometre," hissed Yane.

"I haven't made so much as a rustle this whole trip," snapped Karanga, her temper nearly cracking under such a galling accusation. "If you were half the hunter you are a liar, we could have been done hours ago."

"And now you're shouting," hissed Yane. "Your voice will carry. You never know what you might scare off." As she said this, she seemed to glide away towards the grass on the other side of the clearing, still crouching, not turning her head even once.

Karanga growled under her breath and started after Yane, wondering for the thousandth time that day what she might have done that merited her being paired with this snake-like sociopath.

Karanga was a good Outsider specimen. Her coat was darkened and matted by the unrelenting sun and insufficient shade of the Outlands, and her body, like all the Outsiders, was chequered all over with battle scars. Her physique was toughened and hardened beyond any other pride's understanding due to Zira's four-year regimen of training and the lack of food in the Outlands. It was a hard life, but by now it had made her strong enough that she had nothing to fear in the Pridelands.

Her life had been about as mundane as was possible given the circumstances under which she grew up. She was the daughter of a male from the Outskirts regions of the Pridelands and one of the lionesses of the old Pridelands pride. Her father had deserted them once the bad drought set in during the last year of Scar's rule, and mother had been killed by some irate hyenas soon after. She had only been a little more than a year old then, and Zira had offered her a shoulder to cry on and a source of strength and inspiration in those hard times. As a result, she had whole- heartedly joined her attempted coup and gotten exiled along with everyone else.

The vast majority of the time, she didn't regret the decision, but now, wandering illegally through the Pridelands with only Yane for company, she did wonder what life might have been like. Yane was one of the most bizarre psychological specimens Karanga, or for that matter anyone of the Outsiders, had ever seen. Her voice seemed to have absolutely no volume between the lowest hiss of a whisper, and an ear-splitting bellow that bordered on a roar. She always, even when she was asleep, seemed to be crouched for stalking, coiled up for a pounce, or ready to lash out with claws and teeth. It was such that one never felt comfortable talking to her within arm's reach, if at all. And all this was compounded by the fact that her temper was totally unpredictable. Some days even the most innocuous action or remark could set her off into an inferno of rage, while other days she seemed to possess almost infinite patience. The trouble was telling when she was in which state.

With a sigh over her uncomfortable life and difficult companion, Karanga was just about to another step forward when she suddenly stopped and focused all her hearing outward. Her hardened Outsider instincts had detected something, and she dared not ignore them. She slowly lowered herself down into a fighting stance and slowly began gazing around at the grass-line surrounding the clearing.

A nanosecond later, a yellow stream seemed to launch out of the grass next to her. With a reaction time that did credit to her fitness level, Karanga threw herself aside just in time, and a cheetah shot through the air where she had just been. The two of them landed, scrambled briefly to get their bearings, and, combat instincts instantly taking over in both, launched themselves at each other, fangs bared and claws unsheathed.

Their battle never joined, however.

The cheetah stopped in mid-lunge and quickly back flipped onto the ground, Yane's claws embedded in the nape of his neck. Almost sooner than he was down on the ground, her claws had freed themselves with a wrench paralyzing enough to allow time for a decisive downward slash. The cheetah never had time to even begin react before his jugular was surgically sliced to shreds.

Yane didn't even stop to admire her handiwork. She lunged at her victim's face with her fangs bared and began biting and mauling mercilessly, working her way down to the intact side of the neck. Only when her breath finally grew short and the taste of blood had sufficiently filled her throat did she desist. Yane then turned, took a single stride away, lifted her leg, and urinated into the red pulp that moments before had been her attacker's face. She then stalked away with a low snarl in her throat.

Karanga could only stumble to a halt and gaze in shock at Yane's tough, grizzled, seven-year old form stalking away from the cheetah twitching reflexively in a growing pool of blood. She looked down at and clearly saw their attacker for the first time. He had been young – definitely not more than four years old – and though his face was now unrecognizable, he had no visible battle scars on the rest of his body. His fur, now drenched with his own blood, was soft and well-kept.

Karanga felt cheated and horrified. She had been surprised by a young and well cared for cheetah who had obviously just hoped to win a reputation of his own, and she had never even been able to touch him. She could easily have beaten him and then released him with a warning not to be so stupid in future. That she would have actually done so she could not honestly assure herself, but such a course now seemed infinitely desirable. She was strong – she did not recoil at the mere site of gore – but she could not escape the feeling that the brutality she had just witnessed had been needless at best, abhorrent at worst, and that they would be punished for it one day.

The Outsiders were approaching Za Kodan soil now, and the chance of finding combat increased with every step they took. Everyone else was becoming edgy. Tahl, on the other hand, was looking forward to what the next few days might bring. She knew, with the certainty that comes with an outsider's perspective, that this pride could annihilate anyone that attacked it.

Tahl had been born in Rinkai, the maze of rocky chasms at the very heart of the Za Kodan Empire, and had had the misfortune to be incredibly pretty. This had caused her to be taken from her parents when she was only a year old and placed in the cave that was the imperial harem, which served the pleasure of the emperor and those in his favour. When she was only two and a half years old, she had been painfully deflowered by a huge, hulking beast of a general who had enjoyed her so much that the emperor himself had taken notice and made her his own.

For the next year and a half, she had lived at the side of the Za Kodan emperor himself. She'd been well fed and cared for, and the emperor hadn't been cruelly demanding of her services, but she'd still longed for a better life. When she turned four, she finally decided she could live no longer like this, and managed to run away. She'd been chased to the borders of the empire, but after that she passed into lands that got more and more desolate, and the guards had ceased the pursuit. She'd gained her freedom, but it seemed that death had come with it.

Then she'd met the Outsiders. Zira took her in as one of them, and had turned her from a meek pleasure thing into a hardened warrior. The lightness and flexibility she'd been made to cultivate in her old life had stood her in good stead as Zira rigorously grilled their way of life into her, and she quickly became the most acrobatic fighter and the and one of the best pouncers among them.

And now she was heading back. She almost hoped they found a fight, just so she could show some of those imperial guards that she was no longer so meek.

"Have you thought about meeting your parents while we're here?" Vitani's voice suddenly broke in on her thoughts.

"Actually, no," replied Tahl. "Not until now."

She bit her lip and slowed her pace a bit, her head hanging. Her daydreams of returning to the Za Kodan Empire in an avenging blaze of glory suddenly withered and died.

"I haven't seen them for almost four years. They've probably had lots more cubs by now. I don't know if they'll even remember me."

Tahl stopped altogether, her voice choking up with emotion.

"And I wish they would. I've been happy here with you for the last few seasons, after years of being a slave. I'd almost forgotten what happiness was like. It was all I could ever do to think back to my parents... and then once I came here I stopped doing that because I finally had a future... But they weren't part of it."

Vitani could almost swear she saw a tear quivering in the corner of Tahl's eye. She herself betrayed no emotion, but inwardly had as much sympathy for Tahl as her hardened heart allowed her to bestow.

"You want them to remember you because you so nearly forgot them?" said Vitani.

"It'd be nice to know that someone spared a thought for me those years," said Tahl, picking herself up and starting to walk again.

"We've all thought of you endlessly since you came to us," said Vitani after her, a soft, heartfelt, tone entering her voice and eyes for the first time in a very long time.

Back in the Pridelands, under the noon-day sun, the body of the cheetah so ruthlessly executed by Yane had already begun to degrade into carrion when the grass he had pounced from rustled again.

Again a young cheetah burst from the grass. This time, however, it was not an upstart youth longing for glory, but a powerful and intelligent youth who had seen and understood enough of the world to know the value of survival. Nor did he pounce forward for a fight, but simply ran, desperation wracking him. Reaching the side of the body, he stopped and collapsed.

Mopani, third son of Sopami – the most powerful animal in the kingdom besides the lion king himself – wept bitterly, cradling the mangled corpse's head in his paws.

"Karaki! My best friend in the whole fucking world! What've they done to you?" He wheezed out in his exhaustion and sorrow.

His answer was barely a second coming as his eyes distinguished among all the desecration and mutilation what were unmistakably a set of lion claw marks on his comrade's neck.

"Someone's murdered my best friend," said Mopani to himself, determination and hatred taking over from grief. He looked up from the gory sight of his friend and gazed upwards.

"And I will avenge you upon the bastards, whoever they are!" he suddenly bellowed to the sky. With that, he let out a long, piercing, cheetah scream that carpeted the sky with flocks of fleeing birds.


End file.
